I've spent almost my entire career as a journalist covering tech in and around Silicon Valley, meeting entrepreneurs, executives and engineers, watching companies rise and fall (or in the case of Apple, rise, fall and rise again) and attending confabs and conferences. Before joining Forbes in February 2012, I had a very brief stint in corporate communications at HP (on purpose) and worked for more than six years on the tech team at Bloomberg News, where I dived into the financial side of tech. Before that, I was Silicon Valley bureau chief for Interactive Week, a contributor to Wired and Upside, and a reporter and news editor for MacWeek. The first computer game I ever played was Zork, my collection of now-vintage tech T-shirts includes a tie-dye BMUG classic and a HyperCard shirt featuring a dog and fire hydrant. When I can work at home, I settle into the black Herman Miller Aeron chair that I picked up when NeXT closed its doors. You can email me at cguglielmo@forbes.com.

Apple Loop: An Army of Products, The iWatch Trademark, Jobs' Psychedelic Movie Poster

Keeping you in the loop about some of the things that happened around Apple this week.

Retail rally. Apple CEO Tim Cook is reportedly not happy with iPhone sales at the company’s retail stores. Cook, flanked by top executives including iTunes chief Eddy Cue and software chief Craig Federighi, met with Apple’s retail store leaders at a 3-hour, no-so–secret meeting in San Francisco, according to Apple rumor site 9to5Mac, which says it got the lowdown from “multiple” attendees. Cook apparently was displeased that about 80 percent of all iPhone sales don’t happen at Apple’s stores, even though about half of all iPhones are brought into those stores for a fix at the Genius Bars. Luring customers into the stores increases the chances they’ll buy other products, so Cook is developing “new incentives” to convince customers to buy at Apple retail stores, including back-to-school promotions (which they do every year anyway) and a possible iPhone trade-in program. Cook also hinted at new products coming later this year; analysts are expecting new iPhones – including a lower-cost model this fall. “Store Leaders, according to people briefed on the talks, reportedly left the summit feeling confident about Apple’s fall product pipeline,” 9to5Mac sad. ‘Expect “an army of new products this fall,’ one person said.” If Apple follows its prior pattern of shipping the version of its iOS software about 100 days after it was announced – and announcing a new version of the iPhone when the software is ready — you can expect that fall date to be in mid-September.

Trademarks for the iWatch. News about Apple’s June 3 application for the iWatch trademark in Japan seemed to confirm all that speculation that Cook is serious about creating a wearable computing device. (For more in-depth details about what an Apple smartwatch would do, you can read my stories about it here and here.) It should be noted that Apple hasn’t only sought trademark protection in Japan – it also applied for the iWatch name in Russia, Mexico and Turkey. 9to5Mac has a copy of the filing in Mexico, if you’re interested. It may not be an easy thing getting naming rights worldwide – an Italian software company called Probendi has already registered the name in the European Union, according to the New York Times. But if Apple’s set on the name, expect those naming obstacles to be overcome. After all, Cisco owned the iPhone name before handing it over to Apple. Analysts are uncertain when exactly the iWatch will be released, with some speculating it could happen in time for the holiday season later this year and others saying we’ll see it in 2014. Maybe it will be part of that “army of products” we’re supposed to expect?

Brand refresh, luxury-minded. Tim Cook expanded the management ranks at Apple, hiring the former CEO of French luxury company Yves Saint Laurent, Paul Deneve, to work on unnamed “special projects.” What might those projects be? Well, of course there was a lot of speculation about how Deneve might have some insight into how to pitch the iWatch, given his experience with luxury brands. Deneve, who reportedly worked in sales and marketing roles at Apple in Europe between 1990 and 1997, helped boost YSL’s image – and sales and as fashion/tech merge, especially with something like the iWatch, Apple will need to make sure its product launch positions the device just right. “Deneve returns to Apple at a time when its brand has become “a little bit tired,” Richard Windsor, an independent technology consultant, told Bloomberg News. “Everyone’s got an Apple product now; it’s not exclusive any more.”

The mouse and the musician. Kanye West, who not so long ago described himself as the Steve Jobs of the entertainment world, got an interesting Father’s Day gift from his girlfriend Kim Kardashian: a par of vintage, Apple mice (as in a computer mouse) signed by co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. How do we know? West very kindly tweeted about the gift, and included a photo showing off the pair.

Going big in green. Apple this week that a data center that it’s building in Reno, Nevada will be powered by a new solar farm – part of its push to get all of its facilities working on renewable energy. The solar farm will be built with NV Energy in Nevada’s Washoe County and will generate up to 20 megawatts of power. “When completed, the 137-acre solar array will generate approximately 43.5 million kilowatt hours of clean energy, equivalent to taking 6,400 passenger vehicles off the road per year,” Apple said in a statement. The project will take about eight months to complete, and the new data center will employ about 35 people a the start as as many as 41 staffers by 2016. Greenpeace, which has been critical of Apple’s renewable energy efforts in the past, offered its praise for the project – and took a shot at Microsoft and Amazon for not being so green-minded. “Apple’s latest investment in solar energy in Nevada shows that the company is making good on its promise to power its iCloud with 100 % renewable energy. The detailed disclosure that Apple gave today can give confidence to Apple’s millions of users that the company is powering its corner of the Internet with clean energy,” Greenpeace IT analyst Gary Cook said in a July1 statement. “With Google, Facebook, and now Apple all announcing major new deals in recent months for new renewable energy to power their data center operations, the race to build an internet powered by renewable energy is clearly in full swing….Microsoft and Amazon – both of which still power their Internet using the dirty electricity that causes global warming – ought to take notice. In the race for a clean Internet, Apple is leaving both of those companies in the dust.”

Another maps patent. Google, which just spent about $1.03 billion to buy mapping service Waze, isn’t the only-one interested in crowd-sourced traffic data. But instead of buying the tech, Apple seems to be developing it inhouse, according to application the company has applied for that covers “a method of generating car travel routes based on user preference and crowd-sourced real-time traffic data,” according to the patent watchers at AppleInsider. “Apple’s ‘User-specified route rating and alerts patent filing generates custom routing information based on user input. As described, the system pertains to cellular-enabled mobile devices with built-in GPS components, like an iPhone or iPad. Unique to the application is a built-in system that allows users to assign a number rating to a route just traveled, which is then sent to a central navigation service that generates separate routes for other users based on the information.” All I can say is that I’m for anything that improves Apple’s Maps app. The patent app with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which lists Apple employee Jorge Fino as the author, can be found here.

Steve Jobs stuff. Last week saw the release of the official trailer for Jobs, the movie starring Ashton Kutcher. This week, the poster for the biopic, to be released in the U.S. on August 16, was released. Tagline: “Some see what’s possible, others change what’s possible…” Laurene Powell Jobs, Jobs’ widow, has funded a new ad calling for immigration reform as part of her “Dream Is Now” campaign. You can view it above. The San Francisco Chronicle, which spotted the video, notes that it was produced by Oscar-winning documentarian Davis Guggenheim — the man behind Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth…” And one more thing: Educators in Holland hope to give their students a boost by opening 11 schools in August that will bypass books favor of iPads. The “Steve Jobs Schools,” according to Spiegel Online, will cater to about 1,000 children aged four to 12. But the no book thing is just part of the new approach to education being embraced. “There will be no blackboards, chalk or classrooms, homeroom teachers, formal classes, lesson plans, seating charts, pens, teachers teaching from the front of the room, schedules, parent-teacher meetings, grades, recess bells, fixed school days and school vacations. If a child would rather play on his or her iPad instead of learning, it’ll be okay. And the children will choose what they wish to learn based on what they happen to be curious about.”

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I don’t see this watch being a huge success. Sure some Apple fans will buy it just like they would buy a bag of dirt with an Apple logo on it but a nerd watch? Personally I think the watch might be a really neat toy but it is a step too far. Microsoft tried this years ago and I suspect that Apple’s attempt may be more successful but it wont be “Apple successful”. I’m also sure people will disagree with my point of view but I’d like them to explain the logic of owning a phone and watch that overlap each other in functionality. It will be fun to hear the nonsensical rationalization that will most certainly follow.

I’ll explain but first you have to open your mind to the possibility that someone might want a phone and a watch…Honestly try. They would both tell time, work together (iphone apps would get data from the watch) but the litmus test would be, “does the watch do anything better?” Apple skipped netbooks and created the tablet industry cause tablets do things better. The watch would have to do things better than the phone could and IT WOULD! I think of the iWatch as a “biometrics band” (you heard it here first) that tells time. It would be waterproof and comfortable to shower or sleep with. It would give you sleep data (time in r.e.m.), work out info (heart rate workout, steps taken, etc), and other health data. Imagine the best device for this… Apple wouldn’t be the first wristband company to pursue this but I believe they could be the best if their vision is right. Don’t you?

At least you are a sincere fool. Sleep data? You can’t be serious. And Apple didn’t create the tablet industry as you claim, either. Yes, dummies will pay hundreds more for their Apple tablet that does the same or less than less expensive and better models but you consider this invention? Congrats on being the first in line with a silly justification. Next.

Sleep trackers and activity monitors (Fitbit, Fuelband, et al.) are already selling by the millions. Most analysts expect that market to grow to >100 million within a few years. So, yes, that’s serious.

Right. If I keep getting stupid messages / alerts / e-mails on my wristwatch, which I could anyway read better on the bigger screen of my Smartphone, which I need to carry anyway, than what is the point of this idiotic iGimmick ???

10 years ago you would have said the same thing about smartphones. I use my phone only for making phone calls and sending the occasional text message. Mobile internet is slower than molasses and my home computer can do anything I could possibly want a phone to do, but a hundred times faster. Well we see how that played out.

And for that matter, what does a phone do that a tablet can’t? They’re slower and their screens are smaller. So why do people still use phones? Maybe because they’re better suited for some things than tablets are, even though a tablet can do all those same things reasonably well.

Just because you haven’t thought outside the box and come up with any useful ways to use a smartwatch doesn’t mean nobody else will or that they dont’ exist.

The string of worthless apple products continues – mindless idiots buying products that have nominal value and usefulness and have NO competitive advantage over anyone. I bought an Apple computer and it is the worst computer I’ve ever owned – least reliable – the dumbest software and ass backwards in operation. Never again will anything with Apple be in my house unless it is in a pie and baked.

Yup, I’ve also found that most Apple products are over-priced and thus extremely poor value-for-money. The single biggest flaw is the ‘locked-in’ nature of the software leading to their inability to be customised by the user. About the only good ‘Apple product’ that I’ve come across so far is… Apple Pie :)

“If a child would rather play on his or her iPad instead of learning, it’ll be okay. And the children will choose what they wish to learn based on what they happen to be curious about.”

I find this rather an illogical way to teach a small child. Given a choice, any child would rather waste time playing endless games on his / her tablet, rather than to do anything useful or learn about a new subject. By not exposing the child to a variety of topics, this will limit the child to a single subject, which it may be curious about, but which may be irrelevant for its future.

In what way would this improve the present system of teaching ??? I think this is just a passing fad. Promotion of these Tablets are just ‘publicity-gathering’ exercises, essentially aimed at promoting Apple’s products and not necessarily meant to improve the child’s knowledge.

If a child wants to learn about the use of the Tablet, this could as well be done in their spare time – this is no way to run a school !

Is it really a surprise that no one wants to buy anything at the Apple Retail stores anymore? They’ve been infected with Superiority Complex Disease – where every worker in the store treats a non-worker (the paying customer) like they have the plague – a stoopid plague of some sort. It’s incredible insulting when you are talked down to. Every conversation with an Apple Store worker is dripping in condescension… Even the ‘Thank You’ as you leave sounds like ‘f- You’.

I still admire the quality and purchase Apple products (I own 8 iPhones, 2 Macs, 4 iPad Minis, and 2 iPads for business and personal), but their stores are horrible now because of the people and their attitude (and about half the time they really DON’T know what they’re talking about and recommend/sell you the wrong item – that has to be exchanged later).

They need to get back to retail 101: ‘The customer pays your salary”.

Until then, I’ll go where I’m at least treated like I’m not a complete idiot. I may buy their products (for now) but I’m not helping to pay those store employee salaries.